Monday, January 30, 2012

Andrew Frank, is not the only whistle blower to suffer the Tory chill by losing his job. Chief electoral officer Lorne Gibson has filed a complaint for Alberta's former chief electoral officer,

who was canned by the government of Premier Ed Stelmach in 2009 for the shambolic way the 2008 Alberta general election was run. Someone's head had to roll and, as the man in charge of the election process, it was Gibson that got the chop.

the problems with the election were mostly the fault of Alberta's deeply flawed elections law and the people in the Conservative cabinet who actually had the power to run things.
You don't believe "deeply flawed"? Only in Alberta -- among Canadian jurisdictions, anyway -- were electoral officers appointed by a partisan agent of the governing party.

The Wildrose has said the donations are symptomatic of a diseased political system that comes from the Conservatives being in power for 40 consecutive years. The party also said municipal leaders feel the heat to donate or be punished through funding cuts or other measures.

Because the election was called so quickly, apparently there was not enough time to get voters' lists in order and people were either left off the lists (about 250,000 in Alberta) or had to suffer long waiting times. I certainly did on the advanced voting poll. I never had any problem with my name being on the list, but rather we were for some reason corralled like cattle and made to wait while the slowest people on the planet and completely inefficient pencil pushers tried to cope with make a check mark. It was a disgrace and the local MP was appalled by what he saw.

But back to the donations. Obviously, there was more money thrown around for Conservatives to spend on their own campaign. Holding up the shambles mess for criticism is worthy at this time - to incrementally damage the Conservative self promotion machine and show it up for what it is- pushy, self serving, spiteful towards those who would speak the truth.